In 1918, the 61-year-old Edward Elgar was in the autumn of his career as a composer.
The famous “Enigma” Variations had been written 20 years earlier, and Elgar’s output during the First World War consisted mostly of patriotic music. Once popular, the aging composer was now regarded as a regressive Romantic when compared with Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Ravel. Industrial slaughter in the trenches changed the nature of music. The world Elgar had know vanished in a flash of poison gas and flamethrowers.
Depressed and “sick of towns,” Elgar, with his wife Alice, relocated in May of 1918 to “Brinkwells,” a secluded country cottage in the woodlands of Fittleworth, West Sussex. It was here that Elgar experienced a final and extraordinary creative burst. He was drawn back to chamber music, completing the Piano Quintet in A minor, the String Quartet in E minor, and the Violin Sonata in A minor. The Cello Concerto which followed would be Elgar’s final orchestral masterwork. Defending the conservative nature of the music composed that summer, Elgar wrote, “I know it does not carry us any further, but it is full of golden sounds and I like it. But you must not expect anything violently chromatic or cubist.”
In a letter to a friend, Elgar wrote that his Piano Quintet in A minor, Op. 84, “runs gigantically and in a large mood.” It is the longest of his chamber works, at times suggesting an orchestral scale. After completing the first movement, Elgar warned music critic Ernest Newman that “it is strange music I think and I like it—but—it’s ghostly stuff.”
While walking the paths around Brinkwells, Elgar came upon “a number of trees with gnarled and twisted branches, bare of bark and leaves—a ghastly sight in the evening, when the branches seem to be beckoning and holding up gaunt arms in derision.” (The description was made by Elgar’s friend, William Henry Reed, concertmaster of the London Symphony Orchestra). According to legend, “the trees comprised the remains of Spanish monks who had engaged in sacrilegious ceremonies in the park and were struck by lightning.” (Elgar.org) In her diary, Lady Elgar wrote of “sad ‘dispossessed’ trees and their dance and unstilled regret for their evil fate.”
These macabre images, likely a figment of Elgar’s imagination as there is no record of a Spanish settlement in the area, found their way into the Piano Quintet. The first movement (Moderato – Allegro) begins with an ominous chant-like theme with echoes of the antiphon, Salve Regina, emerging in the piano. It is interspersed with hushed, ghostly utterances by the strings. The spooky second theme is infused with a Spanish flavor. Reaching a feverish climax, the ferocious development section is filled with shivering tremolo. The movement ends as it began, with low ghostly sounds fading into the night.
In his review in The Times, Henry Cope Colles asked, “Was there not something of ‘Nimrod’ in the sustained loftiness of the slow movement of the quintet?” Wistful and nostalgic, the Adagio‘s first theme is introduced by the viola. At moments, the music pays homage to Brahms. Tragedy blends with serene acceptance.
The final movement (Andante – Allegro) begins with a restatement of the first movement’s weeping descending chromatic theme, which is answered by a passionate rising voice in the cello. With the arrival of the Allegro section, this lingering theme is swept away by a majestic new theme which Elgar marks, “with dignity.” Yet ghosts lurk just beneath the surface, with the descending chromatic motif soon weaving its way into, and briefly taking over, the music. The first movement’s chant theme makes a mournful return, along with a remnant of the “Spanish” music. Originally boisterous, it is now heard in muted strings. The chromatic motif remains a haunting presence though the final moments of the coda. Although the Piano Quintet ends with a brilliant and sunny resolution in A major, the ghosts remain.
I. Moderato – Allegro:
II. Adagio:
III. Andante – Allegro:
Recordings
- Elgar: Piano Quintet, Op. 84: Goldner String Quartet, Piers Lane Hyperion Records
Featured Image: “The Cornfield” (1918), John Nash